Category: rants
By - Wednesday, July 21, 2010 - 1:21pm
Over the past day, I’ve probably seen at least a dozen links via Twitter, Facebook and Friendfeed to NPR blogger Linda Holmes’ recent assertion that Libraries may be the next big pop-culture wave. And just last week, spurred by Andy Woodworth, the “Old Spice Guy” made a short video promoting libraries. It even got picked up by the Huffington Post! Yes, libraries may just be having their moment as a pop-culture phenomenon. Everyone’s thrilled.
Except me.
Listen, I’m really not trying to be a Buzz Killington here. I don’t think there was anything wrong with the Old Spice Guy’s video. Nor is there anything bad about creating and encouraging other pro-library “fluff” like a library themed Ben and Jerry ice cream (a movement also spear-headed by Mr. Woodworth, who I swear I am not trying to pick on and actually respect quite a lot), the Librarians Go Gaga video or book truck drill teams. I can appreciate and enjoy those types of things. Not everything that publicizes libraries or gets librarians excited and active has to be serious or weighty. Hell, I even participated in and liked the Library 101 video.
My fear is that by becoming just another pop-culture icon, libraries and their advocates will, in the long run, lose out on assistance and support they could be getting from people. I guess I just don’t want “Save the Libraries” to become another “Save the Whales” type cultural event where everyone gets really excited for a hot second and then they move on the next thing. Fortunately for libraries, we’re sort of used to being uncool, so the shock won’t be too great.
I also fear that this sort of popularity makes possible advocates lazy. For example, there are few things that annoy me more than ribbons that people wear on their lapels, cars, etc. Wearing a colored ribbon doesn’t mean that you are helping to fight the battle against anything. It means that you pinned a ribbon to yourself and are letting people know what cause you support. This has its uses, but it’s nowhere equal to writing legislators, donating money or volunteering time. Likewise, watching the Old Spice video and getting its YouTube hit numbers up doesn’t do anything to support libraries. These are good steps to introduce people to the issues, but we need to make sure we don’t leave people out on the stoop once we open the door.
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By - Monday, February 1, 2010 - 8:12pm
Ten days ago or so I received an email from someone at Westlaw. It said, “Just wanted to send you a quick note… We’ll be revealing the new Westlaw on Feb. 1 at LegalTech New York… I’d like to get you some information about it… What’s the best address to FedEx you something?“ I sent my work address and didn’t think too much about it.
Flash forward to today.
My package from West arrived. There was some paper and a nice letter from someone, the details of which I don’t remember, because also included was what you see to the left. An iPod Nano, 8GB with video capabilities, retail value $149. I guess there’s a video or something on the iPod detailing the WestlawNext features, but I wouldn’t know as I couldn’t bring myself to open it.
Here’s the thing, y’all: I was absolutely livid when I opened this.
I’ve briefly mentioned before my feelings about accepting vendor swag. It’s advertising, I understand that. It’s built into their budgets and it’s not like they would charge less if they weren’t giving out the pens. However, I also don’t feel comfortable being a billboard for the legal information duopoly in front of my students who expect me to speak freely about the pluses and negatives of each service, so I don’t accept the little gifts of pens, coffee mugs, note pads, etc.
But an iPod? I don’t really like to take pens and here they’ve gone and sent me an iPod? As I said to one of my correspondents today, “this is just re-goddamn-diculous.” (Pardon my language, but I was really mad.) It does have “Compliments of WestlawNext” written on, but in super-tiny font. It feels like a bribe, frankly. Gross.
I guess I was expected to tweet/blog my “Thank you, Westlaw!” for it? Well, thanks but no thanks, Westlaw. I hate to seem rude or ungrateful, but I simply cannot accept this gift. (1) I’m an employee of the Commonwealth of Kentucky and we have rules about the monetary value of gifts. (2) Even if I disclose the iPod receipt before blogging about the info sent to me, I still wouldn’t ever feel right about saying positive things about WestlawNext. As I said to another one of my correspondents, “Congratulations, Westlaw, you just bought my silence.” (3) My usual rules of swag acceptance are in effect, no matter how much I love the way it looks or the fact that it shoots video or that my Zune seems to be dying and ZOMG IT’S SO PRETTY AND SHINY AND I LOVE NEW TOYS.
*sigh*
So, here’s the thing: I’m not keeping it. I’m auctioning my WestlawNext iPod and donating the proceeds to an appropriate organization or two. The details are still being worked out (my legal obligations as an public employee, whether or not my target charities will accept the donation, how to set up an auction, if other law librarians want to donate their iPods as well…details, people, details.) So, basically: WATCH THIS SPACE. I’ll have something hammered out by the end of the week. If you received a WestlawNext iPod and would like to get in on this action, contact me at Sarah dot Glassmeyer at gmail and we’ll work it out. And if you are Westlaw reading this (and I know at least someone at West does) and you’d rather that I not do this, I will gladly ship your iPod back to you. Seriously, I’m not trying to be rude about this.
I know my standards are higher than others when it comes to accepting swag from vendors. I have to admit to being a little weirded out by the trip to Minnesota some of my colleagues were offered. (Of course, I also wasn’t sure if there was some jealously on my part that I wasn’t asked to go, so I held my tongue. Some of us are just kinda bigger deals than others, I guess…. I KID BECAUSE I LOVE, JASON AND TOM.) I’m not entirely sure where to draw the line…coffee mugs? iPods? Drinks at the Bender Baby Dinner/Westlaw party? Trips to Minnesota? It not an easy line to figure out. Where does the appearance of impropriety show up? When does one start to feel a little like a corporate whore?
Despite all of my cheerleading for Free Law and complaints about pricing, duopolies, etc., I really don’t believe that vendors are the enemies. But I also realize that they are in business to make a profit and that will always take precedence for them. The vendor-librarian relationship is complicated enough…..please stop clouding the issue with over the top gifts of swag.
By - Sunday, January 24, 2010 - 7:41pm
In Library 2.0 and Web 2.0 philosophies, there is a concept called “Radical Trust.” The idea behind Radical Trust is pretty simple: trust your patrons. Trust them to leave comments on your blogs. Trust them to edit wikis. Trust them to add tags to your Flickr photos or OPACs. Yes, there will always be jerks and 12 year old hackers with nothing better to do than vandalize the materials that you have so lovingly placed out in the Internet for people to interact with. But guess what? You also have to trust that the community will step up and re-edit out the wiki mis-edits and/or trust that are users are savvy enough to ignore a trollish comment on a blog.
Radical trust really isn’t that radical..it’s just trust. It only feels radical to us because librarians and other gatekeepers of information have spent centuries trying our damndest to preserve, protect and defend information resources from theft, loss and corruptions. As I’ve said before, this is a noble and just raison d’etre. However, the digital age has changed the game in many ways. We don’t need to keep materials chained up and out of patrons hands because they may destroy them…now we can digitize and allow many more users access to them. And if they do somehow corrupt the digital versions? Well, it’s easy enough to have master copies locked away that can replace the corrupted versions.
In Law LibraryLand, there is currently a major issue of conflict between librarians and information providers in the area of authentication of digital legal materials. I don’t claim to be an expert on the issue and I haven’t entirely decided what is the best solution to the conflict between the two camps. However, John Joergenson, the digital services librarian at Rutgers University School of Law – Camden, wrote an excellent blog post last year which breaks down much of the conflict.
The American Association of Law Libraries has recently issued a report on Authentication of State Documents which outlines the concerns of the librarian community. If I’m reading it correctly, here’s the problem. (1) Digital materials are vulnerable to lapses in management and control, corruption and tampering. (2) To make up for these vulnerabilities, the digital materials need to equivalent to the official print versions. (3) To become equivalent, they must become “authentic.” (4) To be “authentic”, they must be capable of being “authenticated.” (Um…yeah.) There is no standard or endorsed method of authentication, but it can involve things like digital water marks, chain of custody, certification, etc.
Currently no state-provided (i.e. FREE) digital legal materials are “authentic” and as such, “citizens and law researchers may reasonably doubt their authority and should approach such resources critically.” I guess these researchers are supposed to try and get a hold of a print resource (assuming a library is close by, the state still issues a print verison and/or the library hasn’t canceled its order) OR utilize Wexis (which also isn’t “authentic” and is quite costly)?
This makes no sense to me.
Can someone please explain to me what steps that free information providers like Justia, the Legal Information Institute and Public Resource – or even Google Scholar – need to be taking so that they are given the same respect as Lexis and Westlaw?
I propose it’s time we extend the concept of radical trust upwards…not only should we trust our users to take the information we safeguard and remix and run with it, but also maybe we should start trusting people who want to provide the information to our patrons.I could also put in a plea for open source ILSes, but that’s another blog post for another day.
If an entity like the Legal Information Institute wants to take raw data from the government and put it up on the web in a more easily navigable way than what the government provides on the GPO website, maybe we should trust that they are not altering the text of the materials or even being sloppy in the updating of them? If enough providers get in the game, there will be plenty of copies to compare against to make sure they are accurate. Why is accuracy not enough?
Perhaps if librarians can learn to radically trust information brokers, we will be able to work together and start to see new ways to use and manipulate legal information. Input from the librarian community will allow the information providers to make more useful tools and provide stability, which in turn, will lead to better donor funding for long term preservation and maintenance of the information. And finally, patrons will be able to access accurate legal information much more easily, which ultimately, is what everyone wants.
Like I said, I have no answers. Personally, in my ideal world, the various state and federal governments would step up and provide stable and easily navigable law for free. However, as my mother always says, “…and people in Hell want ice water.” Clearly, we as librarians are going to have to choose between forever being at the mercy of Wexis or working with the free legal information providers. I’m hoping that by writing this, a dialog can be opened between the library camp and the legal information world and some solutions can be negotiated.
By - Sunday, January 10, 2010 - 5:59pm
I like Seth Godin. His book Tribes (which I admittedly haven’t read yet) was quite the talk of SLA 2009. I also like his blog, which generally always gives me something to think about and wonder how I can apply to libraries. So when I saw that Mr. Godin – who is not a librarian – actually wrote about libraries, I was really excited to see what he had to say.
Aw, crud.
Aw. Crud.
It’s…not good. His idea of what libraries are, what they should be doing…I disagree with most of it. I want to unpack his post, but before I do, I want to make clear (and make sure it doesn’t get lost in the bottom of this post) that the main problem with this post lies with libraries and librarians. If someone like Seth Godin, who has met with librarians and has so many fans in the community, can get it so wrong, what does Joe Q. Public think of libraries? This should definitely be (yet another) wake up call that libraries need to think about how we market ourselves.
Okay, on to Mr. Godin’s post…
What should libraries do to become relevant in the digital age?
No problem here. I could be pedantic and harp on the “become relevant” verb usage which implies that libraries currently aren’t relevant, but pedantry helps no cause. I believe that it’s extremely useful and proper, especially when you are in a public service industry like libraries are, to periodically evaluate yourself and change course as necessary. And I don’t mind when non-librarians poke their head into our self-evaluations and offer suggestions – after all, they are our users.
So, one sentence in, we’re okay! Then the wheels fall off.
They can’t survive as community-funded repositories for books that individuals don’t want to own (or for reference books we can’t afford to own.)
What? Wow. So much wrong with this sentence. I mean, obviously for the purposes of his post, Mr. Grodin seems to be talking about public libraries, which is sort of the first problem. If you are reading this, then you are likely aware that there are dozens of types of libraries (many not even called libraries) with as many types of librarians. But, again, that’s really a minor quibble. All libraries are “community funded.” My academic law library is funded by tax dollars and student tuition – the community we serve. Corporate libraries/knowledge management centers are funded by the company whose employees they are expected to serve. There’s just no such thing as an independent library.
Mr. Godin says “repository” like it’s a bad thing. Someone needs to preserve knowledge. Just because something is not immediately needed, that does not mean future generations won’t need it. I take huge issue with the “books that individuals don’t want to own (or for reference books we can’t afford to own.)” part of that statement. Want? Really? I mean, I guess it’s technically true in that I borrow books from my public library because I want to pay my bills and eat more than I want to buy books, but otherwise I just don’t see libraries as currently taking up the slack for people who just don’t feel like purchasing information resources. Call me a commie, but I have no problem with a community (be it a town, a company or educational institution) pooling resources so that all of its members may share information resources.
More librarians are telling me (unhappily) that the number one thing they deliver to their patrons is free DVD rentals. That’s not a long-term strategy, nor is it particularly an uplifting use of our tax dollars.
I get really nervous when we start judging the relevant “uplifting” value of resources, especially in a public library setting. Every library has a mission and ultimately it’s up for the community to decide what they want from their library. In law libraries, it’s not too hard. We, for the most part, collect the laws and the secondary materials that interpret them. It’s also not super-easy, though, because there are myriad decisions about which jurisdictions to collect, format, duplications, etc. Additionally, some law libraries are branching out from their basic mission and are starting “Popular Media Collections” (Deborah Schander discusses her current efforts in creating one here.) Personally, I would love to work on creating a collection like that, but I can see where some members of our community would have an issue with it.
Similarly, some people may have an issue with public libraries collecting DVDs. Surely these people don’t think that everything in a public library is intellectually stimulating, do they? Should public libraries only collect Shakespeare, Dickens and Austen? Should they chuck out the romance novels, science fiction and graphic novels? If DVDs go, does that mean books on tape have to go too? I have this crazy notion that I like to enjoy what I read. My favorite writers are Ernest Hemingway and Graham Greene, but I know they’re not everyone’s cup of tea. Why can’t everyone have free enjoyment from the library?
Here’s my proposal: train people to take intellectual initiative.
Here’s my answer: We do. Or try to, anyway. I mean, this is sort of a major component of librarians’ raison d’etre. I don’t just hand out answers like candy at my reference desk. I show people how I found the answer. I teach a handful of bibliographic instruction sessions every semester in addition to CLEs – and what I do is minor in comparison to many that I know. (A quick check shows that my public library has dozens of computer skills classes every month.) Librarians aren’t trying to be gatekeepers of secret knowledge – we love to explain things to people.
Once again, the net turns things upside down. The information is free now. No need to pool tax money to buy reference books.
Ha. Haha. HAHAHAHAHA. Oh, man, I can’t wait to tell our aquisitions department to tell West to take their bills and STUFF THEM because INFORMATION IS FREE NOW. Frankly, this statement is just ignorant. Yes, there is a ton of great information on the web. However, there’s a little thing called copyright law that keep most information sources from being torrented up on the Internet free of charge – you know, legally at least. There’s also the fact that about 80-95% of all information on the Internet is in the Deep Web and therefore unreachable from search engine searches, not the mention that I’m not going to throw over a solid reference resource for a webpage unless I can verify that the source is legit. (I like to show my students this seemigly okay page on Dr. Martin Luther King. Check out the owner of the site and try not to vomit.) And, as I recented noted for my disclipline of law, while the information is free, the indexing and finding aids for it are not. So, while I wish that this would change, for the time being legal information is not free.
What we need to spend the money on are leaders, sherpas and teachers who will push everyone from kids to seniors to get very aggressive in finding and using information and in connecting with and leading others.
Like I said, we’re trying. Some of us, at least. There is a definite component of librarians who don’t want to explore all the possibilities of user engagement that are currently available, but I think that there are few out there that don’t want to help users find and use information. Obviously we’re not doing a great job on marketing this fact.
Photo credit: http://www.flickr.com/photos/bibliona/202506372/
By - Wednesday, November 11, 2009 - 1:41am
I am made weary by the reports of the death of libraries. And by “made weary”, I mean “aggravated to Hell and Gone” by them.
I guess I could understand if it were coming from outside of LibraryLand – and to be sure, there are plenty of those voices, from the strangers that ask me “isn’t everything on the Internet?” when I tell them I’m a librarian to college administrators decreasing library spaces because “all research is electronic now” and every state funding cut of public libraries in between.
No, what I don’t understand is the rush from within LibraryLand to commit hari kiri.
Some wounds are deeper than others. For instance, the Dean of Libraries at Syracuse posited last week at Educause 2009 that “the library, as a place, is dead.” Some are more subtle, such as the Special Library Association proposing to remove the name “libraries” from its name because those who make budget and hiring decisions would better understand what a “strategic knowledge professional” is than a “librarian.” And then there are the 1000s of little ways in which some libraries and librarians slowly ease themselves down the mortal coil…for instance, turning management of our collections over to commercial vendors instead of investing in open source products operated by and for the benefit of the community or refusing to adapt to changes in technology and patron preferences (or being so enamored of technology that we forget about actual patron needs.)
So, Gentle Reader, I am an annoyed librarian. No, I am not THE Annoyed Librarian. The day I publicly state that passion and enthusiasm don’t matter is the day I get out of the game. The Annoyed Librarian is just the type of naysayer and head in the sand type of librarian that is going to kill the profession. Now, admittedly, I have a romantic view of libraries. I believe that we hold a sacred position in society, much like clergy or medical professionals. (I initially included lawyers in this list, but, well…one fight at a time, yanno?) We preserve, protect and defend the units of culture – ideas. From our laws to the classic works of literature, and, yes, even the latest teen romance novel featuring vampires, these are all valuable in their own way. And just as important as preservation, libraries provide access – they make “men’s talents a public possession.”
So why are we throwing in the towel? Because of the Internet? Okay, check it…libraries have been around in one form or another for about 4500 years. In that time, the form of information storage has gone from clay tablets, to papyrus, to parchment, to books and now to digital storage. We gone from being store houses for government records, to being exclusive clubs for the rich and learned, to being a gateway of education and now guides through the forest of information available in the digital age.
Change is constant. Deal with it.
The gentleman here is S.R. Ranganathan. He is widely known as the father of library science and his Five Laws form the basis of everything I do as a librarian. At least I try to make it that way. This picture is actually a copy of the poster I made that hangs over my desk…I like to think that he’s keeping an eye on me and it reminds me to think before acting. (If you want a copy for yourself, I’ve uploaded it here under a creative commons license…go wild.) Although he wrote these long before anyone thought about the Internet, or video games in libraries, or twitter or any of the other things that seem to have librarians confused as to our purposes, his Five Laws can still be used today.
Here’s how I see it:
1. Books are for use.
First of all, scratch the word “books.” Don’t get me wrong, books are great…they’re just not the only game in town anymore, so let’s just say “information.” Okay, so information is for use. What does that mean? Well, for starters, it means that libraries can’t just be repositories like they were 4500 years ago. They shouldn’t even be locked down like they were 200 years ago. The information should be accessible – open stacks and circulating, unless, for example, they are book so rare or fragile that they can’t be risked to loss. Fortunately, we now have ways around this, such as digitization or even scanning to a durable format like fische.
2. Every Reader His Book
This law speaks to the collections in a library. I’m an academic law librarian. My “readers” (or information consumers) are varied. I have law students, undergraduate students, the general public, law professors and members of the bench and bar. All of their information needs are different and my library’s collection needs to meet them.
3. Every Book It’s Reader
If a source of information is not being used, Ranganathan says that we need to make it more accessible. Catalog it so people can find it. Provide book displays, or pathfinders or – dare I say it? – make a LibGuide so that people know about it. Organize your website so it’s user friendly and people can find your digital collections. Make it clear how they can find an article or a book.
Okay, the first three are pretty basic…information should be available to people, libraries need to collect the information that people need, and librarians need to make sure that people find it. Hard to disagree with those. The next two are where things may get a little uncomfortable for some people.
4. Save the Time of the Reader
There are dozens of ways to save the Reader’s time! Why wait to put library news in a monthly printed newsletter, when you can put it in a blog? Why just put it in a blog which they may or may not check, when you can also have it directly sent to the patron’s twitter stream? Staff your reference desk during the hours that patrons need help…or maybe offer virtual reference servcies (email, chat, or maybe even via text message) so that they don’t have to even come into the library. Provide good signage so they can navigate the stacks. Make the language on your OPAC clear so people know they should attempt a keyword search instead of an LOC subject one. The list goes on and on….
Back to my library…in addition to varied information needs, my patrons have different format requirements. It’s not that the 18 year old college freshman can’t be taught to use a book. And the 87 year old attorney could be taught to use a database. I’m just saying that maybe they shouldn’t have to learn if the information is available in a format that they are comfortable with using. Some of this could be put under law two….every Reader has a book, and that book just may be a database. However, I don’t want to confuse content with format. In my library, we have the same piece of information in multiple formats – (e.g. Kentucky Revised Statutes appear in print, microfiche, electronically via commerical vendors, and on the free web in PDF format from the commonwealth.) Clearly we need to have the KRS because of their content, but the differing formats are for preservation and access reasons.
5. The Library is a Growing Organism
Okay, so the library may not be a quiet place with an imposing reference desk and paper card catalog. Well, guess what? It’s also not a closed place with books behind bars and only open to the very wealthy. Nor it is an archive of papyrus rolls. It’s okay! Or in other words….. change is a constant. Deal with it.
Not matter what type of library you’re in or what you do in it, it’s important to remember that you are in a service industry. And, in the words of Karen G. Schneider, the user is not broken. Let me repeat that…THE USER IS NOT BROKEN. Remember that college dean I mentioned at the beginning of this post? She was talking about the physical place of a library. As my colleague at UK Stacey Greenwell pointed out, intellectual commons and in person interactions are still a vital role of libraries. To support her statment, the dean also said, “Cutting-edge scholars in the humanities are building new disciplines and online environments are are, in effect, libraries themselves; they are diffuse, collaborative, non-hierarchical, always changing.” It’s almost like she’s blaming the scientists for leaving…I wonder why libraries weren’t providing or assisting with the creation of these online environments in the first place. Just because students don’t seem to want a quiet study place or scholars want a place with stacks to roam, we shouldn’t throw out the baby with the bath water.
Broaden your ideas of what a library may be…maybe your reference desk with move to a virtual realm instead of a physical one. Or maybe your library will have mostly digital collections. Or maybe very little will actually change in your day-to-day job duties and environment. As long as the needs of your patrons (both present and future) are being met in a timely manner, it’ll all be okay. If they’re not, perhaps you should check in with Ranganathan and see what needs to change.
By - Tuesday, November 3, 2009 - 12:57pm
This blog post can summarized by a simple question: Why do we delegate the reporting and indexing of the American legal information system to commericial vendors using a proprietary system?
Here’s the historical background/two minute summary I give to 1Ls and Pro Ses approaching legal research for the first time:
(And if you’re a law librarian, lawyer, or otherwise in the know about such things, feel free to skip the next 3 paragraphs)
America utilizes something called the common law system. That means, basically, that we rely upon courts to make our laws in addition to legislatures and regulatory agencies. They do this by either interpreting statutory laws and regulations or analyzing previous cases. It also means that that courts may have to follow the rulings of other courts depending on their geographic location and level of the court. Not every court case is available for review or “reported”…actually very few of them are and they are generally from Courts of Appeals or Supreme Courts. While there are very few reported cases, there are still thousands of cases appearing in hundreds of print volumes. I got a whole library full of ‘em! The rise of electronic publishing means that there are even more “unreported” cases available.
So. How do we sort through these cases? Even if every volume of every reporter were indexed – which they’re not (Note 1) – it would take you forever and a day to find all the cases on your topic. Well, in the late 1800s, there was a man named John B. West who devised a system of organizing and classifying caselaw still used today called Key Numbers. Key numbers are awesome, they allow you to search more efficiently across jurisdictions and time periods – Hell, until relatively recently they allowed you to search at all – and if you should be so lucky to find a key number directly on your topic take a moment in your research process to pause and do a little victory dance because life just got a whole lot easier for you.
But you’re not done! If you find a case that says exactly what you could hope a case would say for your legal issue, you need to find out if it’s still valid. (A higher court or later court may have over turned it.) So you need to check with a system called Shepard’s Citations (available in print or electronically through Lexis) or KeyCite (available electronically through Westlaw). And then recheck all of the cases you find via these systems to make sure they’re valid. Finding statutes and regulations relatively easier than case law, but you still need to check if they’ve been “interpreted” via KeyCite or Shepards.
(BORING OVERVIEW OF CASELAW RESEARCH OVER)
KeyNumbers and Shepards are very useful and necessary products. My only problem with them is that they are “products” owned and sold by large commercial vendors who have a duopoly on accessing legal information – information that is owned and produced by the federal goverment (read: YOU THE TAX PAYER) and forms the very basis of our system of government. (Note 2) As I tell my students, we don’t pay borderline outrageous fees to Lexis and Westlaw for their information – we already own that. We’re paying it for their organization of it.
I think we’re finally at a point in history where the democratization of technology will allow it so that we (as in We The People as well as Legal Information Geeks) can take back our legal information from the vendors. The first steps are already in place. There’s Public.Resource.Org, Justia, and The Legal Information Institute (among others) harvesting what info they can and placing it up on the free internet. The second step is to get Law.gov (recently endorsed by the Mid America Law Library Consortium) up and running. The third step? We need to come up with an open indexing system. Raw data is great, but it’s just raw data. To truly be useful, we need to find a way to organize this information so that it will function within the American Legal System.
I am hopeful that if Law.gov comes to fruition, the government and/or civic minded computer geeks will find a way replicate the functions of KeyNumbers or Shepards (without violating Wexis’ intellectual property) so that Joe and Jane Q. Public can access this information without having to pay vendors. (And, on a selfish note, not to mention a side benefit of some healthy competition decreasing Wexis rates.) I also hope that AALL, SLA, ABA and other legal or information professional organizations become active participants in this process and ensure that issues like authentication are considered.
If you want to talk more about these issues, check out this Friday’s episode of The Law Librarian on Blog Talk Radio. Carl Malamud will be a guest to discuss Law.gov. You also can download it later as a podcast.
Notes:
1) A brief check in the reading room showed that some are. For example, U.S. Reports, published by the GPO. However, my library doesn’t have too many non-West reporters. These all have Key Number based indexes.
2) Legal information isn’t the only area where this is happening. Check out the recent documentary Food Inc to see how a significant portion of the American food chain is controlled by a couple of big companies.
By - Tuesday, October 6, 2009 - 9:01pm
In politics, religion, and yes, even libraries, there’s always a couple of extremists that make more moderate types cringe at their pronouncements.
- “[L]ibraries that don’t offer texting are basically invisible to me…not being available by SMS is akin to not having a webpage.” (source)
- “It’s really do-or-die when it comes to SMS and libraries.” (source)
- “Being familiar & fluent w/ Twitter is a core skill for all librarians” (source)
Wait, what? Was that…was that in that chapter in Leviticus that I’ve never gotten around to reading?
I guess this is why I call myself a Web 2.0 Enthusiast and not an Evangelist. I love tech. I think it has lots of great possibilities for improving library services. I also think there’s a lot of tech applications that our patrons are using anyway, so it’s probably a good idea for librarians to be aware of them so that we speak the same language. (And who knows…these fun applications may morph into something more usable in library services.) But if your library doesn’t maintain an SMS reference service or if you don’t have a twitter account, are you failing your patrons? No, of course not.
I mean, I get it. I know (or am hoping, anyway), that a lot of these pronouncements are made for their shock value in a political theater sort of way to get people’s attention and make them think. But it’s backfiring. There’s a new stereotype emerging of the know-it-all, tech at all costs person. ( This week’s episode of The Simpsons brilliantly portrayed a version of this with Bart’s temporary teacher Zachary Vaughn – Pictured above.) Unfortunately, people are starting to think that all tech users are as obnoxious as Mr. Vaughn here. These tech evangelists make my job harder in other ways… non-techies have built up a defensive posture since they’ve been told that they are inferior and are less open to trying something new.
So, here’s my modest proposal:
If you are a Tech Evangelist, chill out. You’re at 11 and the rest of us need you at about a 5. You’re scaring people and turning them off of the idea of using technology. Also, there is no magic tech bullet. Today’s iPhone app is tomorrow’s betamax tape. Think more about the process rather than specific tools. If you are a Tech Phobe, loosen up. You don’t have to use every service out there, but don’t dismiss them out of hand without trying them. Don’t fear change and be open to the possibility that there may be a better way.
Now lets all hold hands and sing Kum-bay-yah.
By - Tuesday, August 25, 2009 - 1:14am
Yesterday there was uproar in the law library community over this charming ad Westlaw sent to some of its subscribers:
Click to enlarge; the fine print punchline reads "If so, chances are, you're spending too much time at the library. What you need is fast, reliable research you can access right in your office. And all it takes is West."Yes, I agree. It's insulting and offensive. But beyond the outrage, I'd love to see it lead to more discussion of the positive things we as law librarians are going to do to change things so that next time a major legal publisher makes such a blunder, we all just laugh it off. And more important than discussion, action. What do we, the legal information experts, do to take more control of legal information back from vendors?
Do we start at home, encouraging our in-house reviews and journals to publish in accordance with the Durham Statement (have you signed yet?): commiting "to keep the electronic versions available in stable, open, digital formats"?
Do we continue to advocate for better and easier access to government information that ought to be free anyway? How many law librarians have signed the Improve PACER petition yet? There are definitely more than 682 of us.
Do we get more active finding creative ways around such shortcomings, like creating RECAP?
Do we help come up with more tools like handy LibX, the brainchild of a Virginia Tech librarian collaborating with a VT computer science professor?
Do we go continue to call for better user interfaces from vendors? How about going beyond critiquing the vendors to become expert interface designers on our own, making more useful library websites, less sucky OPACs, and engaging institutional or regional repositories?
Do we support our local legal information institutes and figure out ways to make them even better for research?
There's obviously not any set answer here, just lots of possibilities we need to get serious about exploring and implementing so we don't have any reason to get freaked out next time a vendor encourages users to make an end-run around us.
I'm not big on sports metaphors, but in his AALL 2009 keynote, Jonathan Zittrain mentioned the concept of library defense. Even I know enough about sports to know that you can't win only playing defense. So what's our offense?
